Security News
Microsoft says an Iranian state-sponsored threat group it tracks as DEV-0270 has been abusing the BitLocker Windows feature in attacks to encrypt victims' systems. This aligns with Microsoft's findings that DEV-0270 uses BitLocker, a data protection feature that provides full volume encryption on devices running Windows 10, Windows 11, or Windows Server 2016 and above.
A malicious campaign mounted by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group is targeting energy providers around the world, including those based in the United States, Canada, and Japan. "The campaign is meant to infiltrate organizations around the world for establishing long-term access and subsequently exfiltrating data of interest to the adversary's nation-state," Cisco Talos said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
The North Korean APT group 'Lazarus' is exploiting VMWare Horizon servers to access the corporate networks of energy providers in the United States, Canada, and Japan. Lazarus is a state-backed threat actor known for conducting espionage, data theft, and cryptocurrency stealing campaigns over the past decade.
A Chinese hacking group has been attributed to a new campaign aimed at infecting government officials in Europe, the Middle East, and South America with a modular malware known as PlugX. Cybersecurity firm Secureworks said it identified the intrusions in June and July 2022, once again demonstrating the adversary's continued focus on espionage against governments around the world. "PlugX is modular malware that contacts a command and control server for tasking and can download additional plugins to enhance its capability beyond basic information gathering," Secureworks Counter Threat Unit said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
Major financial and insurance companies located in French-speaking nations in Africa have been targeted over the past two years as part of a persistent malicious campaign codenamed DangerousSavanna. Countries targeted include Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, and Togo, with the spear-phishing attacks heavily focusing on Ivory Coast in recent months, Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point said in a Tuesday report.
Microsoft's threat intelligence division on Wednesday assessed that a subgroup of the Iranian threat actor tracked as Phosphorus is conducting ransomware attacks as a "Form of moonlighting" for personal gain. "DEV-0270 leverages exploits for high-severity vulnerabilities to gain access to devices and is known for the early adoption of newly disclosed vulnerabilities," Microsoft said.
The prolific North Korean nation-state actor known as the Lazarus Group has been linked to a new remote access trojan called MagicRAT. The previously unknown piece of malware is said to have been deployed in victim networks that had been initially breached via successful exploitation of internet-facing VMware Horizon servers, Cisco Talos said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Lazarus Group, also known as APT38, Dark Seoul, Hidden Cobra, and Zinc, refers to a cluster of financial motivated and espionage-driven cyber activities undertaken by the North Korean government as a means to sidestep sanctions imposed on the country and meet its strategic objectives.
Security researchers have discovered that Minecraft is the most heavily abused game title by cybercriminals, who use it to lure unsuspecting players into installing malware. Based on stats collected by the security firm between July 2021 and July 2022, Minecraft-related files accounted for roughly 25% of malicious files spreading via game brand abuse, followed by FIFA, Roblox, Far Cry, and Call of Duty.
High-profile companies and local governments located primarily in Asia are the subjects of targeted attacks by a previously undocumented espionage group dubbed Worok that has been active since late 2020. "Worok's toolset includes a C++ loader CLRLoad, a PowerShell backdoor PowHeartBeat, and a C# loader PNGLoad that uses steganography to extract hidden malicious payloads from PNG files," ESET researcher Thibaut Passilly said in a new report published today.
Cybersecurity researchers have offered insight into a previously undocumented software control panel used by a financially motivated threat group known as TA505. The control panel, called TeslaGun, is said to be used by the adversary to manage the ServHelper implant, working as a command-and-control framework to commandeer the compromised machines.